Sealed With A Kiss
by songsora
Summary: George's interlude with a fresh-faced call girl in Aldbourne becomes something of a saving grace for her...and for him. One shot. Not based on real events.


If he could shuffle her into words.

If only.

But the diction wouldn't stick. Prose slid off her like hot wax off a dying candle. The most he could conjure was descriptions of misery, of heroes of the softer kind with suffering like parenthesis around cigarette-flavored lips. She was smoking one now. Of course she was. It was clockwork. This whole world thrived on the calm only nicotine could afford to buy. No one else knew how to fashion the awkward pieces of console into something that would fit the broken mind of a soldier at war. With himself, with a country he'd never even been to, with everything that he had ever known as it shattered in the mirror of the life he'd left behind. Purpose was the shimmer of light that danced over the remains. It was gone as dark uncertainty settled in. The future was bare. Only time knew what colors would brush against the blank canvas of what was to come.

But George, he was no fool. He knew better than to feel sorry for something he couldn't do anything about. Death? Well, if it was his time. Who was he to dictate the rules of fate? It wasn't his game to play. He was just a piece. A pawn. He didn't move on his own account; he was _moved_ forward. By the hand of God. It wasn't in his nature to question the mold of the footprints he would have to fill. He just fit his feet into the cast and said thank you for it too.

She looked at him as if he were some kind of monster. Maybe he was, but he couldn't remember stealing the first breaths of infants in their cribs or tearing down cities with his bare hands. Perhaps he was the monster of a different story altogether. If he could turn the page, he'd see the picture of a soldier standing before a young girl that had seen too few winters to be standing on a street corner with eyes as gaunt as death itself. She couldn't have been any older than him. They shared the years that had given birth to a new generation.

He'd ask her for a drink. No more, no less. There was always the possibility that she would mistake his intentions. _A shilling for a fuck _sort of sentence would form in her mind, halting commas of doubt sneaking in somewhere in between the offer and the declaration of her trade. They were both in the business of destruction. Both charred to black by the fire. The one that consumed them all. He liked to call it war, but it went by so many different names and wore so many masks that often times his head would spin as he tried to fathom them all. War was easy to remember.

He cleared his throat. That was easy enough to do. "How much for a drink down the street, huh?"

"I think you mistake what I do, sir."

"Call me George. My father is sir," he replied. "And I don't mistake anything. I just want to buy a drink for a pretty girl. Is that too much to ask?"

Subtlety was this girl's middle name. A hand that seemed to ask all the questions brushed hesitantly beneath a heart-shaped chin. Her eyes flickered behind her. Searching for the culprit of this man's obviously misplaced attentions. He'd been called crazy before. Rabble-rouser was his favorite though. No one could take that kingly title from him, not for all the kingdoms in the world.

"I see you looking over your shoulder there," he accused her. "And yes, if you must know, I'm talking to you. I don't make it a habit in my line of work to talk to brick walls. Especially since they don't laugh at my bad jokes."

"How do you know I would?"

Proof of purchase. He lifted a shilling before her eyes. "Because I'm paying for your place in the bread line tomorrow, that's why. I'm good at foretelling the future. Just you wait."

A wink and a smile. Well, if it worked for Talbert, the fucking pretty boy, then it could work for doe eyes and too much hair that seemed to jut out like hands in all different directions. No amount of grease could tame it. It was as wild as he was, through and through.

"Don't you want…anything more, sir?" She asked.

Was that a question? He couldn't be sure. It sure sounded like one, but he'd been mistaken before. It happened to the best of them, even him. The lilt on the end made him think of question marks, so he was fairly certain she was inquiring after the stark lack of sexual favors in their little deal. No hotel room liaisons with poor man's champagne growing lukewarm on a cool windowsill. No peeling off clothes like second skins and revealing her for what she really was. A bag of bones hanging on the coat hanger of a closet society. The spark of nerves in her voice told him she was new to her line of work. Mostly like he was. He could deal with that. He could stand to preserve her innocence, if his could not be spared, if even just a little while longer.

"Oh, you're a sly one, aren't you?" He looked at her sideways, as if it would improve the look of her. Part of him couldn't stand the vacant look in her eyes that he could see all the way down into her empty stomach. "If you wanted two drinks, just say so! I'm not shy and I'm no light weight. I can go a round or two and hold my liquor just as well as a fella twice my size."

She might have had the youth of a simpleton, but her eyes boasted a different truth. The way they rushed forward to meet him. The little veils that protected her from showing too much hurt and too much fear to a paying customer that might as well find someone more willing to take them up on their two shillings for one whore investment.

He paused her relief. Put a stopper on her joy. Because she was just too pretty with all this pent up light falling out of her, more revealing than her clothes, for him to pass up on such an opportunity to bask in the light of something pure for once.

"Just one thing," he said, eyes flickering to her lips that arched like Cupid's bow. He could feel the sting of an arrow being shoved up his ass. So much for love comes softly. "I'd like another shilling's worth of a kiss."

"I've got a lifetime's supply of those, sir."

"_George_." He insisted.

"George." She tried the name on for size. It fit into the nooks and crannies of her lovely mouth perfectly. As if it was made for her to speak it aloud beneath street lamps in the middle of nowhere England. "I can spare a kiss free of charge."

Pressed up against a brick wall. Mouths pressed together that tasted of the war, but neither seemed to mind. That was where she was saved and he was saved and both in different ways that seemed to line up with one another in the end.

He'd rescued her innocence, if only for a little while longer.

She'd preserved his sanity, if just for one more night.

* * *

A/N: George and a hooker. Hmm. Just a one shot that I wrote earlier. It probably makes no sense. Which means I'm losing my mind for sure! -sniveling ensues-


End file.
